5.13.2014

Alright Rudy, so we’ve all seen
Guy’s Epicly Later’d where Stacy
Peralta comes clean about not wanting to initially include you on Powell. Did
you have any idea that was the case? Have you had the chance to talk to Stacy
about it?

No, I haven’t had a chance to talk to him and it’s funny
because I didn’t know anything about that. I like that he was so honest about
it, though, but it did make me go back and think about a few things from back
then. It definitely tripped me out for a little bit but I came to the
conclusion that if I had to choose between Stacy Peralta or Mark Gonzales
thinking I was worthy to be put on a team, I’m beyond proud that it was Gonz
who chose me. The Gonz overpowers Stacy in my book.

Agreed. But back to
Stacy, was shooting Ban This as
cumbersome of a process as it would seem? I know you guys filmed early in the
project… what was that, a couple days? Did you guys have to wear the same
clothes everyday in classic Powell-style?

We filmed all that in two weekends. That was it. And yeah,
Stacy made us wear the same clothes for all four days.

It’s funny because I remember all of us worrying that our
part was going to suck. We didn’t think that we had enough time to film
everything. We had so much more stuff for the video but Stacy didn’t want us to
outshine his more established pros. He told us that it wasn’t our time yet. But
in the end, it didn’t even matter because people were stoked on our part
anyway.

Were you guys allowed
time to really try tricks or did you have to make them fairly quickly before
Stacy would want to move on to something else?

He wasn’t really on it like that because, to be honest, we
were all still first- or second-try back then. We were basically taking him to
spots that we already knew and skated. We knew exactly how the flow was at each
spot and what tricks we had there.

We’d actually get together and have hour-long conversations
the Friday night before filming about what we wanted to do and basically plan
it all out. Someone would want to do a trick at a certain spot so we’d have to
plan out what the rest of us wanted to do there and how we wanted to do it…
all-together or whatever. But we all skated together a lot and knew what each
other could do.

At that point, we could all do basically everything.

Street skating was so
young.

Exactly. There was only one trick that I had trouble with
during filming: a no-comply to tail that I actually did rolling up to the spot
without the cameras on. Stacy was like, “We gotta film that.”

You gotta remember that he was still using that crazy film
camera back then, not a video camera. So after maybe 10 tries, he told me to
just get up there with my board to tail and hop down.

“Powell Magic”

Yeah, that was my first taste of what editing can do. It’s
perfect in the final cut! (laughs)

We mentioned Stacy
essentially throttling your guys’ footage in order to protect his big name
pros. How were you guys treated by the rest of team back then as little kids?

We didn’t really get to travel with the big guys on the
team. I remember thinking when I first got on Powell that we were going to
start hanging out with Cab and Tommy Guerrero but it wasn’t like that.

We ended up going to the premiere of Ban This and they didn’t even want to let us in. Here it was,
Powell has their own theater and it’s this really big deal and the people at
the door won’t let us through… and we’re in the video! I couldn’t believe it.
They didn’t even know who we were. It was after seeing Tony Hawk show up in a
limo that day that I realized we still weren’t those dudes.

We were all cool with the next generation of Powell guys
that came after, but of the Chin guys, the only one that really took us in was
Lance. He was the most awesome Dad to us, man. He did a lot for us.

I know you famously
hung up on Gonz the first time he called your house… what was the process like
for you getting on Blind back then? Was it always a package deal with you and
Guy?

It was weird how it worked out because I’m not sure if Gonz
had even heard all that much about Guy back then. I know he really wanted me on
but I’m not sure about Guy.

Mark and I had already been skating some by that point and I
remember being at Mark’s house when it all went down. He called Rocco on
three-way and was like, “Hey, watch this, dude. We’re going to do it.”

It’s crazy, though, because at the time, I wasn’t sure about
going to Blind. I was getting $2,000 a month on Powell, which is a lot,
especially for back then. And they were already working on turning us pro. I
really didn’t know if I should leave or not.

Rocco always had a thing for putting young kids on the team.
Like Chris Branaugh, he always believed in the little tiny rippers. So it was
Rocco’s idea for Guy to get on Blind. Rocco is the one who made it a package
deal and Guy was totally down to go.

It’s funny because Rocco had been already reeling us in
little-by-little…

“Hey, come on down to World and check things out!”

or “Hey, take some Ghetto Wear!”

We were stoked!

I think Powell was just too big for us at the time. It’s
like they lost control and couldn’t maintain us. They even had this crazy rule
book for everybody on the team.

I was wondering if
you ever had to deal with that.

Yeah, we went to Powell once and actually got reprimanded
for what we wore! Being a fan of H-Street, I wanted to wear a Matt Hensley
shirt and I totally got in trouble for it.

“What are you guys doing!? George is walking around! You
can’t be wearing that stuff!”

I’d never even met George before and now I’m getting
reprimanded for wearing a shirt? Stuff like that is why I decided to leave.

Did you expect such a
backlash from Powell? I mean, you just said that George hadn’t even met you
before. Do you think it was more about you guys leaving specifically or Rocco
in general?

Probably both. They were already bummed on Rocco after what
happened with Rodney and Mike V. But with us, it was something different. I
think when we left, it hurt Powell in a different kind of way because we were
the new generation. We were the younger street skating kids and here we are
quitting Powell back when nobody quit Powell.

So yeah, they were mad. They ended up making those shirts
about us.

The Brainwashed
Victim ones?

No, we actually made those. We made those because Powell had
already made ones that they passed out to a bunch of people at the NSA Am
Finals in Reno. It was Guy and I from that wheel ad we had. They cropped us out
and wrote “Little Boys Who Play With Themselves Go Blind.”

Oh yeah…

Yeah, that shirt was floating around and at first, I was
kinda pissed about it. I thought it was so lame and I couldn’t believe that’s
how they came back at us. It was so stupid, man. Have some balls. Mark thought
it was funny, though.

But, of course, Rocco didn’t play around with that and just
clobbered it. Making it so ridiculous.

I take it those
Powell graphics were his idea?

Oh, that was totally Rocco. That’s when I knew it was going
to get crazy. But those graphics turned out so good, man, and they just killed
those guys. I think it was Mark McKee who did those… He chose whatever graphics
he thought he could make funny and they turned out so rad.

Classic shit. So
let’s get into it: how’d you go about filming for Video Days? Just organically trying shit in sessions or were there
specific filming missions? Were you nervous at all with not only filming for your
first solo part, but now with two gnarly legends involved like that?

There were a few filming missions but so much of it came from
just skating with those dudes in a regular session. When you’re skating with amazing
guys like that, you want to skate well anyway. With there being the extra
pressure of the video, that made you want to skate that much better.

The way it worked was just going out and filming for a
while. When it came time to finally wrap it up, we each got to go out with
Spike individually for anything we still had left to get. It was such a rad
time.

One thing I do appreciate Mark doing back then is that he
never showed us his footage while we were filming. We were always looking at
each other’s clips but he was the one who’d never really let the rest of us
know where he was at. The most he’d do is just walk in all excited and say, “I
got something today!”

“Dude, let’s see it!”

“Nah…”

He kept his whole thing from us until those last few days.
But when we finally saw it, we couldn’t believe it.

It’s funny because I remember thinking since Mark had a bit
of a different style and the rest of us were already a bit more technical that
maybe his part might not end up being all that great. So many people from his
era were already past their prime by that point and the parts they were putting
out weren’t as good as their ones before. I was actually worried that maybe
Mark’s part was going to be like that, too.

I used to look at Mark back then like he was so old. He was
only 22 or so but I looked at him as a grown man. (laughs)

He had a house. He had a car. He did his own shopping at the
market… we were street kids. This dude’s not out there skating like us.

But he showed me his part and I was completely blown away.
So rad.

Best part ever. So
when did the drunk driving concept get into the mix?

That came later. At first, Gonz just wanted the car in it.
Just to have that vibe, you know. But as things went on, they figured they had
to crash the thing. Gonz wanted everyone to die in the video and crashing it
would be cool so we decided one night to go to Mexico and crash it... because
there was really no other place to do that but TJ. That’s how the whole drunk
driving thing came into it. We were just having fun, man.

Why the 1-900 number
for your death date?

That was actually my phone number! Except for the area code,
that was my phone number back then. They said they did that because they
couldn’t get a hold of me the night they were editing and they didn’t know my
exact birthdate. (laughs)

But looking back on it, I think they just wanted to throw
one random in there. That was kind of our thing, just to trip people out. Like,
what is that? People thought that number meant I was the one that lived.

That definitely was not planned. I was kinda tripping out on
it… like, “Dude, that’s my real phone number!”

I actually had a few people call me, too. They figured out
what it was and what my area code was… I was getting calls for days because of
that.

How did that whole
Gulf War rally part go down? Was that just you guys lurking around?

That whole thing came about from us wanting to skate that
handrail. That’s the Federal Building handrail that Mark frontside boardslides
at the end of his part. You can see those guys standing by it there. We went to
skate that rail but they were having that rally so we couldn’t skate it. It was
barricaded off. Skating there was going to be impossible and we were all pissed
about it so we started fucking around. Jason started getting all into it… super
funny, man.

Mark ended up going back there on his own to skate it. We
weren’t around.

How well do you think
those parts served to really capture Gonz and Jason’s skating? What was the
gnarliest thing you ever saw them do that was never filmed?

The thing you have to keep in mind that is those parts were
basically both of those guys’ first parts. I mean, Gonz had his part in Psycho Skate and a few of those contest
videos but you basically knew he was “the Gonz” through print. So this was the
Gonz part that everybody had been waiting for since his Vision days.

Pretty much the same thing for Jason, too. You saw him in
ads but you didn’t really see him skate. But those parts came out and made
those guys that much bigger. It was very significant for them.

But something that always stuck out in my head about both
those guys was how well they skated vert. They were real vert skaters to us.
They were doing real airs, inverts and all that. I’m not sure if that really came
across in the video.

As far as what I saw them do outside of filming, there’s so
many things. Mark was always out skating and doing weird stuff. One time in
particular was at this market close to his house that had these different
levels of parking. He goes, “Watch this, dudes.”

He starts pushing, does a kickflip on flat, a tre flip and
then ollies into the open divider between the levels into a noseslide and
tailslide on each side all the way to the end. It was so rad; total Gonz-style.
He totally should’ve filmed that.

How tight was Jordan with
the team? Somebody must’ve kept him on, right?

He was never really around, to be honest. It sucks because
he was a good guy and I used to totally admire his vert skating. But I’m really
not sure how it all worked for him. I know he was in contact with Mark a lot
but Mark used to always make fun of him a lot, too.

I have a feeling that he came along with Danny Way but after
Danny left, he stayed behind and just went with it. The problem for him was
that we were all street skaters.

At that point, Blind was really coming into its own. It was
becoming what it was always supposed to be. The team had been there before with
Jovontae and everyone but it had finally worked through everything to be what
it was meant to be. Jordan was one of those elements left over from things that
had already gone down to get it there.

We always hear rumors
of people “almost” getting on Blind back then. Anybody stand out? Wasn’t Jason
Jessee in the mix at one point?

Now that I think about it, I think so! I know Mark was
always a big admirer of Jason Jessee’s skating.

I do remember Mark really wanting Randy Colvin on the team.
He was always trying to get Randy on the team but with him already on World,
Rocco didn’t want to do it.

What was the
connection with Blind and Toyota?

(laughs) That’s a good one.

It comes from when I got my first car. I was getting pretty
good checks as an amateur and when it came time to buy a car, I went out and
unknowingly bought Mark’s favorite, a Toyota Corolla. It was a simple car but
he was so stoked that I got one. He’s actually driving a Corolla in Psycho Skate when he throws the glasses.
He was so hyped.

“Dude, Toyota
Carollas are so cool, man! They go really fast!”

That’s how it turned into being on my first board. I
remember him asking me what I wanted for a graphic but I really didn’t know.
The only thing that stood out for me came from back before I was even on Powell
when I’d always see Tommy and them riding those “Experimental” boards. It was
like you knew you couldn’t have one, even if you tried. Shops didn’t carry
those; you had to be on the team. So I told Mark about that and he started
putting a graphic together. Once he got it finished, he shows me my graphic and
it’s this drawing with “Experimental”
really big on it.

“That’s cool, Mark. But what’s up with the Toyota?”

“Toyotas are sick cars, dude!”

He was so happy I bought a Toyota that he wanted it on my
board, too. (laughs)

My favorite one, for sure, is the Jason Lee one with the
flag, the gun and the Bible. That’s my favorite. I wanted to ride that board
just because I was so hyped on the graphic.

Did your family ever
see “Rear End Rudy”?Yeah, but way later. I had to hide that one from my Mom. She would’ve flipped
out. (laughs)

So did
you know that Gonz was about to leave Blind when he did? What was it like there
without him?

I did know Gonz was going to leave. Mark and Jason just
weren’t happy. We were at a contest in Munster and you could tell things were
going on. Mark was talking shit on the whole deal, saying it was fucking lame
and everything. And Jason made it clear that he wasn’t going to hang out if
Mark left. So Guy and I were definitely bummed but we were still so young, we
really didn’t know what to do. It seemed safer to stay.

After that, Blind just seemed like another rad company under
World. Whatever Blind was had died, at least to me. It was all Mark and Jason.

Not to say we were treated bad or that it wasn’t a good
time. It just wasn’t the same.

Was there really
going to be a 2nd Blind video before Girl started?

We actually did want to do another Blind video. I was
planning on one. At the time, we had Lotti and Bertino and they all really
wanted to put something out. Those dudes especially had a bunch of footage to
introduce them to the team.

I didn’t know about Girl back then. I wasn’t in on those
first official meetings. Guy was and he’s the one who first told me about it.
It’s funny because he first brought it up to me hypothetically, like “Imagine
if Rick started a company with just us. Wouldn’t that be sick?”

“Dude, what? What are you even talking about?”

I had no idea. But yeah, Rick was hanging out a lot with us
at the time and we were all super close. We were basically all living together
at Guy’s house. So yeah, it sounded rad but I still didn’t fully get what he
was talking about. He ended up having to break it down for me and telling me
who was going to be on it. But I was down, man. Let’s do it.

So there wasn’t any
hesitation this time?

We just needed something new and I was also hearing things
about Rocco that didn’t really make much sense. I mean, I remember Gabriel
showing me his boardsale checks on 101 and they were almost $6,000 a month…
which was a little weird. I was selling so many of those 40 Olde English boards
but I never really seemed to be getting paid like I should’ve.

On Blind, after Mark left, World put us on minimums. It
didn’t really make much sense to us what was going on but they told us not to
worry. Looking back on it now, I definitely didn’t make what I was probably
supposed to in board royalties.

The thing is that we really didn’t know any better. We were
just young kids, stoned out of our heads. But these weird things kept on
happening and were starting to add up. With Girl, it was going to be our thing.
It was our friends and it was going to be sick.

There was no hesitation about leaving.

How was filming for Goldfish? The Plan B guys were used to
the Ternasky pressure cooker but coming from Blind, could you really tell any
difference in how it was made?

Yeah, Blind was far more mellow than Plan B. We actually
used to hear these gnarly Ternasky stories and trip out; him paying off his
riders for a clip. That even goes back to before Plan B during H-Street. That’s
why Jason said all that stuff in Video
Days about paying you $5,000 to slide that handrail. The Plan B guys got
that stuff, too.

Overall, Goldfish
was really mellow and cool, but for me, I was bummed on how my part came
out. I honestly thought my Goldfish part was going to be way better
than my Blind part. I feel like my skating was at its peak then. But I ended up breaking my arm while arm
wrestling my friend Matt Schnurr. It was a really bad break and I had to miss
several months, which my part suffered for. I’ve always felt like that part
wasn’t justified.

So what happened
after Goldfish? Everything you were
putting out was top-shelf and you even got your own shoe for a while but you
were kinda underground at that point. What was going on?

Yeah, I started getting injured a lot while also starting to
get more into music. I joined a band and got more into the traditional-skinhead
ska scene. But honestly, I just slacked off on it. I mean I’d still be out
skating and put out an ad here and there but I was definitely slacking. It was
different then compared to how it is now where you can film some tricks and put
them out via a bunch of different websites. The stuff will come out. Back then,
it was just for the big video. That was it.

What about those crazy DC Supertours? It had to be pretty
surreal with everyone riding around in those jerseys. What were those like?

The first one
was actually pretty good. The jerseys on that one were kinda cool, way better
than the ones for the second tour. Those were ridiculous. But the first tour
was a really well-organized tour. We were hooked up with the nicest places and
the tour bus was actually a real gnarly tour bus. It wasn’t everyone piling
into three cars.

But yeah,
every demo was packed and all the kids were super hyped. You could drop in and
do a 5-0 and people would be screaming like they were at a concert. It was
insane. They were so happy to be there, it was really cool.

The second one
just wasn’t as good. It was still cool, just kinda played out. The jerseys were wack and the overall feeling
among everybody was like, “Again? We’re doing this again?”

Did you go into Yeah Right knowing that it would be your
swan song?

Yeah, I totally knew that was going to be it. I had to tell
Rick that I didn’t want a retirement part, just to let this be it.

But I knew it was time. I still had a board out but I was
usually just included in the one-off series. I started noticing that I wasn’t
in the main series of boards. I finally ended up going to Rick to tell him this
was it. It was probably overdue but I didn’t want the day to come where he
would have to tell me to go… I wanted it to be me telling him that I was done.

You were
talking about Gonz being “old” in the Blind days, did this same feeling
eventually get turned on you as you got further into your career?

I guess so,
but it was later on. It’s funny because when I reached my early-twenties, I
thought I was still a kid. It wasn’t until I got my own place for the first
time around ’97 that it started to come up. It’s funny because I remember
thinking to myself, “Well, I guess I’m going to have to cook my own rice
tonight.” (laughs)

So good. How did Royal
come about? And what is your role there?

I always knew I wanted to do something with Girl, even after
I was done being pro. That’s the life I wanted. At first, I thought about
possibly doing a board company with them but I figured they didn’t really need
that. Trucks were something that could still be cool and they weren’t doing
that. And it only made sense for Girl to have their own. That’s how Guy and I
started Royal with them.

It’s honestly a weird job because I don’t actually have a
title but it’s rad, dude. I just try to do as much as I can. Working with
graphic designers on ideas and answering emails… honestly, it’s always a little
difficult to talk to people about it. They’ll ask me what I do and I won’t know
what to say. There’s really no name for it.

Starting Royal with Guy, would it be safe to say that as “the LA Boys”, you still share a type of special bond with those dudes after all these years?

I would say that we definitely share a bond because of that
part. I mean we had no idea what an impact it was going to have. No idea. Then,
all of a sudden, people were really checking for us. It was crazy.

Our entire skate careers came 100% from the “LA Boys” and
we’ll always have that. Guy and I were talking about that the other day
actually… That over 20 years later, it all started from that part.

It must’ve been difficult
for you to watch some of those guys go down such dark paths over the years in
terms of addiction. How did you deal with seeing your friends go through gnarly
shit like that? Did you ever try to step in or intervene?

It was hard, for sure. I tried to help where I could but it
was all so sad to see. It really was.

It’s unfortunate the way skateboarding works sometimes. It
starts out as something you do and then you can become so big in it, all of a
sudden. You’re really hot one minute and then you’re spit out. But you’re so
busy while you’re in it that you can’t really prepare for when it’s over. And once
you add in all the other stuff that people can get into, it gets that much
gnarlier.

I tried to help those guys as much as I could by trying to
be there for them physically and emotionally but when it comes to stuff like
that, you can only do so much.

Do you think it might
have had something to do with being “child stars” in a sense? Or is it not that
simple? I mean, the World Park couldn’t have been the most positive way to grow
up… on top of the normal pressures skaters experience with a bit of success,
right?

It’s probably a mix of all the above. Being a child star
with essentially no responsibilities was definitely part of it. At the time
with skating, the thought was to let you create on your own. There was really
no one there to push you. You were allowed to do it all yourself. But if you
started to slack off, it was still all on you. I assume it has to be so easy to
go the other way. Everybody takes their own path.

Honestly, I was blessed. I know 100% that I was able to stay
grounded because I was with my now-wife the whole time. Straight up, she’s what
saved me.

She’ll like that I said that, too.

Yeah, I was about to
get to that because it always seemed like you largely dodged all that stuff.

Yeah, it was because of her.

I think another thing that helped me over the years was
realizing how important the social part of riding for Girl and Chocolate was,
too. Obviously we were all friends just to be involved with those companies but
I feel like some of the guys I came up with saw riding for them on a different
wavelength than I did. It became like an “out of sight, out of mind” type of
thing… which probably didn’t help them either.

I was hyped seeing
Paulo’s recent Cherry part, though.
Gotta say that I was a little surprised when it came out but it was so good
seeing some new footage.

Exactly, it’s really good to see him on his board again. I’m
hyped that he got to do it in his own style, too. Really cool.

Biggest life lesson
learned from Mark Gonzales.

The biggest lesson Mark taught me about life came from the
fact that he called me. I didn’t even believe it was actually him at first, but
once I did, I realized that wishes can come true.

Is it strange to see
Blind still going today?

I’m happy it is for the skaters that it’s supporting. Blind
still supports skateboarding. And I also thought it was cool when they secretly
put our video hidden on their video. It’s cool how much they still respect us
and what we did for the company, even if it has changed over the years.

But one thing I always thought would’ve been cool, if they
were to keep the name going, was to not use that same drawn logo. I wish they
would’ve changed that up a little. I always thought using the same logo was a
little weird. That was Mark’s logo. He drew that.

Who is one guy you
always wanted on Girl but who never quite made it onto the team? I know Henry
Sanchez is kind of the go-to answer here…

Henry actually had the chance but he didn’t want to.

I really wanted Gonz to get on Girl. It actually almost
happened once…

Gonz on Girl!?!

Yeah, I was really pushing for it to happen. I believe it
almost happened at one point but it didn’t work out and that’s when he got on
Fourstar.

Holy shit!

Yeah, man. It was crazy. I know Rick wanted it, too. It
actually came down to a vote with the team and unfortunately, that’s how the company works. He didn’t get the vote. But yeah, that’s
how the idea of getting him on Fourstar came up. We had to get that guy
associated with the Crailtap family, for sure.

Did it have to
be a unanimous vote?

I think it had
to be unanimous, yeah. It’s always been like that with us.

Care to divulge who voted against it?

I don’t really
know. I know our generation of dudes were all totally about it happening; we
always had the highest praise for the Gonz. There were probably some younger
dudes at the time who may not have gotten what the Gonz was all about at the
time.

Jesus… should’ve
kicked those kids off instead. So is Video
Days the best skate video of all-time?

I thought it was really good but I can’t believe it is the
best of all-time. I understand it a little better now that I’m older than I did
at the time. When it came out, I just thought of it as the next Rubbish Heap. Really good but with that
same style of filming and everything.

I’m blown away by how many people are still so stoked on it
though. I am really thankful to have been blessed to be part of that. I thank
Powell for getting people initially into us but the Blind video is really the
legacy. That’s the first thing that comes out of people’s mouth when they see
me somewhere: Video Days. They still
get super stoked.

What’s your favorite
skate video of all-time?Future Primitive, for sure. It was
the first skate video I ever saw and I still watch that one to this day. That’s
the one that made me fall in love with skateboarding… the rest is history.

Does anyone think that MAYBE Stacy went out of his way to diss Rudy was because of the Powell knock off graphics??? Rudy was the only one of the 3 to have skated for Powell. Stacy is corny dude either way...

Rudy, me and my friend Morgan totally called your house in video days - days! we were 818 and figured out that you were 818 too. ha! i think we just giggled and hung up or maybe fucked with you a little bit. so rad...

Contrary to most other opinions, Rudy had my favourite part in Video Days when it first came out.

Got to spend a few days around him when he was filming for goldfish (I was crashing at the filmers house in Vancouver). Opening line at newspot was amazing to see in person. I didn't spent much time around pros back in the 90's but of the ones I did, he was definitely one of the nicer ones.

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